Lifting the Veil on Western Feminisms' Humanism

 In both of this week's readings by Fatima Mernissi and Chandra Mohanty, we explore how ideas ideas of feminisms and Islam are loaded terms that are commonly measured within Western frameworks of recognition in regards to Muslim women in Islam specifically and women of color  more broad scale, or the "third world women" to put it in Mohanty's words. This reality of living within a Western-dominated mindset or perspective in the mass media that globalization has enabled through the neocolonialization of what is true knowledge and civilization in the "modern" world has blurred the definitions of individuals and  communities These readings discuss how colonial and imperial structures of patriarchy that creates different epistemologies about about communities where one is obviously the center and the other is at the periphery that tresults in violence from these interlocked systems of oppression. Violence of identity and community values.

In Mernissi's article, she  explores this "tradition of misogyny" that is misguidedly widespread about Islam and Muslim communities as inherent patriarchal with her own agenda that doesn't victimize her own community the way that most western feminism scholarship has done under the wing of western humanism as Mohamty writes extensively about in "Under Western Eyes." Mohanty argues that there is a certain objectification that happens under this privileged of vexing a sociologist or feminist in the western spheres of influence and knowledge production. Mernissi's work does the opposite of this and is successful in humanizing a community often written off on stereotypes in western media as victims. She cites the example of 'A'isha, the Prophet's Wife, who led the armed resistance against the leader Ali. Mernissi provides the traditional arguments that derive from this example of the "Battle of  ('A'isha) the Camel" that is a core value in Islamic Hadith about women in leadership supposedly bringing no prosperity.

It is interesting to see how Islamic historians have weeded ot the female role that 'A'isha has played on Muslim politics historically through the essence of the naming and erasing that underwent with the construction of that battle's name. The use of this story has been used to deny the election of women in politics where Islam is a big part of the political culture. Mernissi's examines how this story has created the foundation for misogyny that is used as a valid argument in debates about women's participation. Within this scope,  she uncovered the truth of militant and strategized feminine resistance that exists in Muslim history that needs to be named without a reductionist lens we are used to in Western humanitarian  academia and scholarship within the imperial university space.